Head of Rossotrudnichestvo Liubov Glebova: 'Universities should take part in working out new mechanisms of recruiting overseas students'

The meeting was mostly dedicated to the matters of recruiting overseas students through Rossotrudnichestvo offices.

Ms. Glebova mentioned that there are different types of parties interested in overseas recruiting, namely the government, those companies who partake in foreign trade, and the educational system itself.

She elaborated, «Our main objective now is to create a new recruiting mechanism that could benefit all the interested parties and guarantee the best results. We want to include universities into this process because they have the relevant expertise, KFU being one of those which we would like to see in this working group».

Ms. Glebova praised the KFU’s practices in recruiting, accommodating and assisting overseas students in their educational needs. “The direction that you chose years ago has proved to be the right one. No modern research and education center can exist nowadays without such cooperation”, she added.

Specifically, thanks to the KFU International Office’s efforts, the number of enrollees in the academic years 2014/2015 rose twice year-to-year. Currently there are 2 106 foreign citizens from 90 countries studying at KFU. Moreover, the KFU’s experience became the basis for the Global Universities’ initiative titled “Creating the system of international enrollee recruitment as a part of enhancing international reputation of the Project 5-100 participants”.

KFU made some propositions as well. Rector Ilshat Gafurov suggested opening Russian language centers with the supervision of Rossotrudnichestvo’s overseas offices. He explained, “We don’t have many problems with teaching natural sciences because there are some English language courses in the curricula, but humanities are another story because there is much miscommunication due to differences in translation of the professional lexicon”.

Besides, there is also much to be done in ensuring the actual arrival of enrolled students. For example, about 10 percent of enrolled persons didn’t arrive at Russia in 2014. Therefore the working group will also pay attention to creating more foolproof ways of notifying the lucky ones and providing visa services in a timely manner.

There are about 15 000 students coming to Russia each year to study. The government intends to gradually increase this number in the following years.